The present invention relates to a probe carrier for detecting foreign objects close to the ground surface, particularly for detecting mines and unexploded shells.
The ground area close to the surface is in many locations highly contaminated with foreign objects due to industrialization and military activity. For example, throughout the world large areas are contaminated with mines, unexploded shells and other war material and consequently such areas are unusable due to the risk for life and limb of humans and animals. Equally problematical is the contamination of military training areas by fragments, projectiles, etc. The detection and subsequent clearance of these and similar scrap and junk items are of great significance.
For the detection of electrically conductive and in particular metal scrap, which cannot be directly detected by humans because they are in the ground, use is frequently made of inductive probes operating according to the eddy current principle. It is also known to carry out by means of magnetic field probes searches for magnetizable ferromagnetic materials, particularly being magnetizable by the earth's magnetic field. Apart from personnel and cost intensive, as well as hazardous manual searching by the probe-using teams, where the land makes this possible, use is also made of portable probe carriers, which generally carry several probes and allow a more rational search. DE 44 43 856 describes a portable or travelling probe carrier, which is pulled by means of a cable or chain by a land vehicle and also has a driving seat adaptable to the slope or gradient. It is considered advantageous in this method that the probe carrier hanging on the cable or chain is otherwise freely mobile and can largely freely follow the surface relief of the ground. However, particularly in the case of probes with a pronounced directional characteristic, with such a probe carrier it is difficult to associate the search signals detected by the probes with a specific location in the search area.